A brain dump about living and working on the edge of the social web.

14 posts from November 2005

November 28, 2005

Today is "Cyber Monday." Can we please stop with these media & analyst created names? "Black Friday," "Cyber Monday." This year, more than any other in the past, seems to be the worst. And you know it's not going to get any better. Yahoo! isn't helping. On Friday they had their top searches module focus on "Black Friday" terms. And today they are featuring a silly story about "Cyber Monday" in the "In the News" section on the home page. Enough with this. Like Americans need any more reasons to shop or waste their money...

November 27, 2005

I picked up my new iMac at work on Friday. Apple delivered it there. It's the 20-inch screen 2.1Ghz, 250 GB HD, 512 MB RAM version. It's a thing of beauty. Great big screen, super fast. It includes a double-layer SuperDrive, built in iSight camera, a Mighty Mouse, plus this new interface to media files called Front Row. It also comes with a remote control for Front Row that attaches magnetically to the side of the screen. Another little feature is some software called Photo Booth. It's a silly application that uses the built-in camera and some image filters to take photos of you sitting in front of the computer. If you have kids, they'll love it.

We're passing along my older iMac to my brother. He needs it.

Anyway, it's a nice machine, I just need to get it up to the Mystery Room to load it up with my files and software. I'm also planning to use as many Apple features as possible. I set up my itsbeach.com mail with with their Mail app, and I'm going to try to use iChat with Jabber and YIM. iCal as well.

November 25, 2005

Today is "Black Friday." What a peculiar name for the first big shopping day of the holiday season. Black Friday. I understand that it's about profits shifting to the black, but still. I've heard that plumbers also call today Black Friday because of the abundance of calls they get to clean out post Thanksgiving drains.

This isn't the biggest day for online shopping. Most folks apparently are outside. Next Monday is a big day, "Cyber Monday" (ack!). Then the first week of December it picks up considerably.

When I worked in retail, the biggest shopping day was usually Christmas Eve or the 23rd. The day after Thanksgiving was good business but never the biggest day of the year. But we have to start somewhere and today is as good a day as any.

So all the shopping sites have done what they're going to do for the holiday by now. Amazon has rolled out some new features. An improved list tool is probably the most noticeable. I think it's supposed to help organize your shopping. It's not clear to me how successful it is in doing this yet. I need to use it more and see the benefits in their recommendation before I can say. They're also testing tagging of products and a ProductWiki. I have my questions about these trials. Do people understand tagging? That's been argued left and right. A Wiki? The majority of the people that benefit from Wikis, namely Wikipedia don't understand the concept. I have some thoughts here, but again, I need to use these features more, before I can comment.

November 20, 2005

It's Sunday, I've recuperated as much as possible from the launch. I'm sitting in Lulu's.

The last few days have been interesting . Lots of buzz about this thing. That's cool. I'm happy about it, but I'm more happy about the things we're going to launch coming up. We built a solid platform for social commerce. But there's so much more to do.

We developed the Shoposphere, as funny as the name sounds, as a user contributed active space about shopping and products. It allows folks to express themselves through the stuff they enjoy or know something about for the benefit of the community's education or amusement. It's a pure form of knowledge collection and expression. And well, people seem to like it. Go figure. I just hope it helps and entertains people as they shop online this season. I hope it grows into an incredible resource for our customers.

We have a code freeze for the holidays starting Tuesday. So we're working on improving some things about Pick Lists and the Shoposphere page before then. There will be a better edit page, navigation through search to find more Pick Lists, and some other features. During the freeze we'll be working on more enhancements, most important are tagging, search integration, and revenue sharing. But we are also looking at better flickr integration, improved Pick List creation, blogger tools, deeper 360 integration, web services, and other tricks.

I encourage you to build some. Share what you know and help out others. Perhaps you've done a lot of research on a product or product category. Or you are some kind of expert. This gives you an opportunity to lend a hand those venturing out trying to do the same thing. Or hell make a list of things you'll need to fight a yeti.

By the way a week ago Yahoo! and Google had 0 results for "Shoposphere" now Yahoo! has 109,000 and google has 212,000... sorry about that. The Yahoo! results are better for some reason.

November 14, 2005

I'm stinky. I'm stinky and tired. I'm covered in that post launch grunge that sticks to you as you try to kick a product out the door. Good Times.

Today or tomorrow or tonight we released Pick Lists and the Shoposphere on Yahoo! Shopping. These are beta releases. I'm the PM. I'll get into this later. But essentially it's "social commerce." That's a fancy term used to describe folks expressing themselves through stuff --people sharing knowledge and product affinity for the benefit and amusement of the community.

There's lots to discuss here... but I'm going to go home to sleep first. Shower.

Here are some links related to Pick Lists and the Shoposphere (yeah I know... "shoposphere" -- you want to make something of it? I'll fight you right here and now! :p )...

November 13, 2005

It all comes down to this. You know what's been great? My LAUNCHcast station. Definatley the best thing Yahoo! Music has for me. What about Yahoo! Music Engine you ask? I'm sorry but it's still too slow. They shouldn't add any new feature or content even until they fix the speed going from page to page, song to song, album to album, whatever. Section to section. It's way to slow. There is no reason why it should take 15 to 30 seconds for a page to load. I don't care what they have to do, but this should be addressed as soon as possible. Also, there's no reason why the new release pages should be random. I click on one album then go back and the order is all messed up. Silly. I know those guys, I'm sure they're working on it. I only say it out of love.

November 12, 2005

It's Saturday again. And I'm here at the office. Tweaking and tightening things. I'll explain later... It's a bit of a bummer. I'm going to have to miss Laughing Squid's 10th birthday party. Scott, I hope it's a blast and you have a great time! You deserve it! I think you've done more for fostering community spirit online than almost anyone. I'm happy to know you.

Maybe this is a good time to talk about something that's been on my mind. I live in Santa Cruz. It's pretty freakin' far away from where the action is. I'd love to be further north sometimes to hang out with my friends in this world. Sure there are great folks in Santa Cruz, but it definitely feels isolated. There's a certain energy that I like to tap into that I miss out on being amid redwood trees instead of tall buildings. Even here in Yahoo Shopping sometimes feels like we're in a bubble. Yes we're in the Search and Marketplace group, but Search is the epicenter. Shopping is very important and successful thanks to a great team, but it also feels secluded sometimes. Search has that energy. Shopping is more tactical. I'm looking to change that. I mean the energy part. The action.

Maybe it doesn't matter to most, but it does to me. I love being in a highly creative and challenging environment. I feed off that energy. The excitement of innovation. I always have. I think that's why I'm here. I'll leave it at that.

November 09, 2005

Bono showed up today to hang out. Hey that's how we roll. He remembered me from that time in 1987 at the Cow Palace. I was the one dressed in a black trench coat cheering him, I may have had a lighter. It was cool to catch up. Anyway it must suck to be Terry Semel. Always having to entertain these interesting and influential people. He and I should go bowling.

November 08, 2005

I got my iPod Monster in the mail today! Yea! Finally something to keep my 30 giger snug as a bug. It's green with pink eyes, the way a monster should be. I'll post more about its adventures later, but I just wanted to share the news.

Now I need a "lanyard" to hook into the ears. What should I use? I was thinking twine.

Obligatory Introduction

I'm David Beach and this is my blog. I'm a Product Manager, Information Architect, and founder of 12seconds.tv. I work for eBay Mobile. I'm also surviving lung cancer. This site is about my life online and some other junk... enjoy ;)